Category: Uncategorized

I am working on some website cleanup this week and changing up some menus. I realized that this should be just one post and not it’s own page. Below you can find a few links to hunting and archery related submissions from years gone by.

Gratitude and Respect is an article I wrote for Simply Traditional’s Blog recently. It’s everything that I think is good about bowhunting, and it doesn’t shy away from everything I think is wrong about modern hunting media.

I also have a guest blog post on Simply Traditional about the Magnus Single Bevel and the first animal I harvested with one. I also did a little video on how I make a “tanto tip” with these heads, you can see it here.

I’ve been writing articles for Sticktalk, the Michigan Longbow Association’s publication, for a number of years. Here you can find the majority of those as published.

• Sticktalk 14 2016 Winter
• Sticktalk 13 2015 Fall
• Sticktalk 12 2015 Spring
• Sticktalk 11 2014 Winter
• Sticktalk 10 2014 Fall
• Sticktalk 09 2014 Summer
• Sticktalk 08 2014 Spring
• Sticktalk 07 2014 Winter
• Sticktalk 06 2013 Fall
• Sticktalk 05 2013 Summer
• Sticktalk 04 2013 Spring
• Sticktalk 03 2013 Winter
• Sticktalk 02 2012 Fall
• Sticktalk 01 2012 Summer

Last week Chaffetz withdrew HR621, and there was much rejoicing from outdoors people from all walks of life. It seems in the following celebration of “victory” everyone forgot about HR622. For many folks who haven’t lived out West it might be difficult to understand exactly how important this is. I will use an example from a place I’ve spent some time to illustrate.

Granite County Montana is a beautiful, and I feel in my heart, a magical place. It’s total land mass is 1,730 square miles and it’s population fluctuates around 3,000 residents. Just take the summary description from their published Growth Policy Plan:

“The County is largely mountainous and contains portions of Beaverhead-Deer Lodge and Lolo National Forests. The Continental Divide crosses the southeastern boundary and the Sapphire Mountains define the western boundary. A section of the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness area lies along the southeastern boundary.”

Yeah, that’s an amazing place to get into the backcountry!!! Did you know I’ve seen a wolverine in the wild? That happened in Granite County. Biggest herd of elk I’ve ever been in the middle of during hunting season, Granite County. I’ve got some go-to spots for fly fishing on the dog days of summer, a few of the best are in Granite County.

Why do I have so many great memories in this small place? Because it’s wild. 65% of the entire county is public land! Interestingly only 2% is state land. That means 63% of that county is comprised of those national forests and BLM land. River access is available on the Clark Fork River, Rock Creek, and Flint Creek. There are hiking trails, horse trails, and camping spots all over the place. All of this is a short drive from the airport in Missoula.

Now that you have an idea of what the landscape makeup is, let’s talk about those people. About 3,000 people living on a relatively small part of the land. There is one full time sheriff, and 3 other people on the payroll. The day I was a victim of a hit and run the sheriff was out of town on business and nobody else was authorized for overtime. We were left to sort it out and with a handshake I was told by the good, slightly drunk, doctor that he would pay my auto body bill for the damages to my truck. He never paid, answered his phone, or responded to any letters sent leaving me with a $3,000 bill and no police report to start legal proceedings. From my experience I would say the cash poor county can’t even afford to maintain an appropriate payroll for what they already should be enforcing. If you read into the Growth Policy Plan, they actually site “poor and untimely law enforcement” as a major object of concern as well as their inability to fund appropriately via existing revenue.

If HR622 passes it will mean no federal funding for law enforcement on 63% of that land. It’s not clear from public documents how many of the 41 tax paying Federal employees in Granite County are serving in a capacity that would be eliminated by HR622 if it passes.  The 4 law enforcement people working for the County already would then be given the duty of patrolling the extra hundreds of square miles that wouldn’t be under the jurisdiction of federally funded officers. Also those square miles are the hardest to get too, which also makes them the most expensive to patrol. If you read about the state of the County’s patrol vehicles, I’m sure they couldn’t get to many of the places that the well equipped high clearance 4×4 trucks with Federal plates can go.

Although spread out over many miles, Granite County is a small place. Only a few thousand people live in the entirety of it, and I consider some of them friends. I am amazed by how far they can stretch a budget and how many services they can provide given their budget limitations. I hope that nobody takes any of this as a slam. I present this as information for people who have no context to how important federal funding is for the places that are made up by federally controlled lands. The tax payers of Granite County can barely break even with maintaining what they have, to double or triple the burden of law enforcement would bankrupt the county.

It would just be nice if our elected officials would stop introducing stupid bills that would create far more problems than they would fix.

HR621 was introduced last week with the goal to eliminate 3.3 million acres of public land. People of all different walks of life with all different political views have mobilized to try to stop this bill. While one person might want to hunt on the land, an anti-hunter might want that land protected to aid in the stabilization of an endangered species. You know a bill is bad when ranchers and mining companies don’t like it (remember they already get access to some of these lands for pennies on the dollar.)

If you don’t have any previous knowledge of what this is all about, please take three minutes to watch this video:

If you use public lands for any sort of recreation please contact your representatives and tell them to vote this down! If you fish or hunt, please consider joining Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. If you do not, please consider an organization like the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

I’ve written of this before, but it’s such an important event in my life I think it’s worth recapping for anyone who missed it.

A few years ago in February of 2013 I was on a hog hunt in Georgia. Every hunter in camp had an American Semi-Longbow, or a “Hill style longbow” if you will. There were folks from coast to coast and Canada in camp that weekend and it was a wonderful hunt regardless of all of us being universally skunked.

Among the group there were two gentlemen who had hunted all over the world, including several Africa trips each. The crowd gathered around these guys as they talked around the fire at night, but in the early mornings there were just a couple of us who came to them to pursue more info before they went after pigs. Of many pieces of helpful advice, here is the one I clung to: Figure out the biggest and toughest animal you ever want to hunt, buy a bow suited for the job, and start there.

I spent quite a time reflecting on this. Surely if I waited until “retirement” at an official age of 67, would I be able to draw a heavy bow for truly big game? Surely not! Being already 38 years old I needed to make a plan quickly while I was still able to draw a bow sufficient to penetrate thick and heavy boned animals. Whatever I lack in knowledge and finesse at this age can be overcome with sheer poundage and arrow weight.

It wasn’t lost on me that these gentlemen were around 70 years of age as they conveyed this to me. They were still hunting internationally, but their bows were drawing in the forty pound range. They had the benefit of fifty years of experience, decades of tuning expertise, and an impressive idea of what the word “sharp” really means. In this I saw the beauty of what I call “the arch of the bowhunter.”

Two years later I hunted hogs in South Carolina with a fantastic gentleman 81 years young. He’s taken plenty of big game and gone on many fantastic adventures. These days he hunts with a longbow in the low 40s and I would be terrified to be on the receiving end of one of his arrows. Still shooting wood shafts and broadheads with stunning sharpness, he is likely more lethal at his age as I am at mine.

Thus an interesting aspect of the arch: While I’ll need 40 more years to get this level of experience, I can’t wait to get that experience before I pursue the really big game. Having now passed my 40th birthday, I realized I was at that crossroads. I had to choose now if I would pursue any of the truly big game of this world before I lost the ability to physically draw a sufficient bow for the task. I have accepted the challenge, and I will hunt a magnificent animal in 2017!

Did you know the “wild hogs” in North America were planted here by Europeans intended to be a food source for future settlers? That’s right, we basically left the gate open on the fence so the hogs could fend for themselves until such a time that we needed them to eat.

I hunt feral pigs along the Savannah River, a location that had Spanish hogs (Sus Scrofa) planted there in 1520 by Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon. There were of course many other releases over many voyages, but I like to think that the DNA strain of these animals could go back almost to the discovery of the new world itself.

In retrospect it’s easy to see all of the damage done by releases of non-native species of different types on different continents. Just look at the feral cats and feral rabbits of Australia as a simple example. Our feral hogs have contributed to the extinction of ground nesting birds, and are currently one of the biggest threats to the eggs of sea turtles.

This is probably a good time to mention Conservation Status. If we look at the wikipedia pages for these two animals we will notice a big difference between them. The Green Sea Turtle is listed as being Critically Endangered, while the Wild Hog is listed as Least Concern. Often I’ll hear non-hunters say something like “all of God’s creatures deserve to live.” I think it’s a beautiful sentiment in principle. On the other hand, does that one hog get to eat those 200 eggs and not only kill 200 turtles before they hatch, but also push an entire species closer to extinction? While we estimate that hogs are responsible for 1.5 Billion dollars of damage in the USA every year, I don’t think that comes close to the real cost when we look at destruction of native flora and fauna.

Considering that I am not a vegetarian, I consider my choice to hunt destructive feral animals and to eat their meat as the highest possible good. I’ve had some wonderful debates with people who identify as vegan anti-hunters, and even they are quick to understand the seriousness of this particular problem.

As with all things that pull at our heart strings, discussions go downhill when we start talking about animals that we consider “cute”. Let’s consider the Black Bear. Here is an animal that many consider cute, or to have human-like traits, but it is also listed as Least Concern. There is no chance that black bears are going to go extinct, their range is actually increasing in size at a startling rate. Bear hunters sometimes get a dose of anti-hunter hate for the idea of killing one of them. I suspect they don’t know enough to consider that mature male bears can kill a dozen cute little baby bears each year. Why would a bear do that? Research has shown that sows can go into heat immediately after losing their last cub. It appears that male bears will kill cubs just to have more opportunities to have sex with their mothers. I’ve never pursued bears as quarry before, but after what I’ve read on this subject, and after having eaten a good deal of wonderful bear meat, I could see hunting for mature male bears someday.

It’s easy for me to come to the conclusion that hunting feral animals is both good for the environment and for my own sustenance. It’s also easy to see where selectively harvesting animals in the Least Concern category can also be beneficial for far more than just my own selfish interests. So where does one draw the line? Clearly I’d never hunt a rhinoceros. Would I hunt something that was Vulnerable? Near Threatened? By understanding that Near Threatened is really just a category for a species in decline, the answer is no. Least Concern is a broad category that includes animals expanding at a rate that could make them a concern in the opposite direction!!!

I believe as an educated and aware hunter I can make both a positive impact on the ecosystems that I hunt in, and I can nurture my body at the same time.  Wild animals do not get injected with hormones or other chemicals. They do not get penned up and force fed genetically modified foods. The quality of the meat available for those who are willing to work very hard for it far surpasses the very best meat commercially available at any price point.

Humans are not outside the food chain, and some of our rash decisions have had massive negative impacts on the natural world. We must do our best to live well in this integrated world.

Everything old is new again.

I never really thought much about string trackers until I read this hog hunting story from Jerry Russell. If you haven’t read the Story of Kong before, you should click that link right now!

After that there was a little stir on the forums and I watched a few videos Jerry put on youtube that I found this one in particular very informational and helpful. with getting setup and avoiding the basic mistakes people make with them.

Once a person understands the basics, then you need to get one. Since none of my longbows have a bushing in them, I need a Great Northern Traditional Gadget Adapter. I mount this right at the bottom of my rubber bow grip. Next I got The Tracker and several spare spools to test and hunt with. I have found that I prefer the 17# thread, I see no effect on arrow flight and it’s very abrasion resistant.

The coffee mug holds two spare spools and ensures they don’t get crushed in my hunting gear tote. VERY important you don’t smash down a spool as it will drastically and negatively effect arrow flight. Besides, can’t hurt to have an extra metal coffee mug on hand, right?

Now after I got setup with what I described above, Chad Orde of Drifter Traditional Archery created a very nice looking tracker for us trad hunters.I bought one as soon as he announced them. Compared to the old plastic style, here are the pros and cons as I see them.

Pros: looks great, doesn’t require a gadget adapter, very quiet, nice large opening with very smooth wood endcap, made in the USA by a fellow trad hunter.

Cons: I had a big storm open up on me and I was soaked in the rain. As the leather got wet it started to bend into my riser. Perhaps I had it strapped too tightly to my riser, but I was concerned about what point it might effect the drag on the string.

I still use both of them depending on what my mood is. If I think rain could come in I always go with the plastic one. I’ve recovered a few animals using them, and in one case I do believe it was the difference between meat spoilage and not. I am thankful for that string every time I cook up some of that boar!

During my first year of hunting with a longbow, I shared one deer camp with a nice bunch of fellows. They asked me a bit about my quiver, and I asked them a bit about theirs. Nearly all of them had Great Northern strap on quivers on their longbows. As we were wrapping up the conversation, Mike Vines quipped “you’ll have one of these eventually.” He was right.

In the years between that comment and June of 2016 I have bought and sold 5 bow quivers and 4 back or side quivers. I weighed out the pros and cons of my field experiences with all of them and decided on exactly what quiver I wanted for my “one bow”, a Great Northern side mounted Kickback.

Here is how I decided on this being my “ultimate” quiver.

Several of the “strap on” models from other manufacturers had a tendency to slip up the upper limb when putting arrows back into the hood after a failed stalk or uneventful sit. I really didn’t like the idea of it moving enough to effect my tune. When I had this bow made, I had quiver inserts put into the solid phenolic handle. I have used the rubber straps that Great Northern uses on it’s awesome Gadget Adapter for my string tracker and bowfishing, and I believe their strap on quiver would be a great choice too, but I want to eliminate that entirely from my quiver setup.

Great Northern uses little thumb screws. I bought two extra sets and stashed them in my hunting tote. I had a hunt where I had put a side bolt quiver on this bow with an allen wrench and then lost the tool during the hunt. I had to drive home with the quiver attached to both sides of the bow, and the bow not in the case. That was actually the event spurred me to finally contact Bob and get my quiver made.

Last thing I needed was an extra deep hood to keep my long 3:1 heads fully covered.

I took my bow to Compton Traditional Bowhunters Rendezvous and had that angle of the kickback measured up on my bow, and I put my 32″ long arrows in it to see how it would follow my lower limb. I REALLY like the kickback design and I’m really glad that Great Northern now offers it. About an hour later Bob had finished assembling my quiver and I put it on my bow where it still remains.

I really can’t say how happy I am with every aspect of this quiver. All of my old quivers are sold and gone except a side quiver that I still use on 3d courses. Now we know, Mike Vines was right.